Think that I have mentioned this topic here before, although I cannot be entirely certain as I post this. But I will post it now, after yet another hotly contested election that seems to underscore the threat of anger and hatred and talk, yet again, of the "culture wars" that seem to hang over American politics, and has not for some years. Remember, Pat Buchanan delivered what is now often referred to as the "Culture War Speech" during the 1992 Republican Convention, and it was widely condemned at the time. But that speech, which was widely unpopular and was cited as one of the reasons that the Republicans lost the 1992 election, seems to fit right in with modern Republican platforms, despite having taken place over three decades ago now. Many feel that it actually began something, and in fact helped the perspective of those who believe that we are right now engaged in what has indeed come to be known as America's "culture war." But this may have had some roots well before Buchanan's speech, or even well before our own lifetimes. And it really does not take somebody with a piercing intellect to see it, because there have been rather clear lines going from certain points in the past, right to the present. Let me explain what I mean.
There has pretty much always been a political divide in the United States, particularly between bigger, more urban states and smaller, more rural ones. Not coincidentally, this also happened to largely coincide with the states that were against slavery, and those which championed it enough to be willing to secede from the Union, and which fought against Union forces during the Civil War. For the most part, those slave states incorporated systems of official racial segregation in what came to be known as the Jim Crow South. Those states voted almost as a block, and it came to be known as the "Solid South."
Jim Crow racial segregation remained in place for nearly a century. This racial segregation was enforced legally, as well as through social norms. But efforts to end this began to pick up following World War II. A few years after the end of the war, the Armed Forces were officially desegregated with Executive Order 9981. Also, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Then came the historical Brown v. Board of Education case right in the middle of the otherwise conformist 1950's, and the writing was on the wall.
Of course, none of these measures came easily. Often, in fact, they were met with stiff, even often violent, resistance. We have all seen and heard of some of these things. Peaceful protestors at segregated lunch counters being harassed and physically abused and taunted by locals South of the Mason-Dixon line. Church bombings. Political assassinations, particularly of civil rights leaders. The Violent police crackdown of peaceful marchers on the Selma bridge in Alabama.
Still, efforts to desegregate continued. To be sure, many in the South - including many prominent Southern politicians such as George Wallace, who became a nationally known figure and even ran for president - resisted fiercely. Often, they used the Confederate battle flag as "their" flag, with that banner representing the traditional or "Old South" and it's values. If you watch video footage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the Southern state of Texas, you can see some Southerners protesting his presence by waving the Confederate flag, not long before he was gunned down not much later in Dallas. I am not saying that this was the reason that he was assassinated, but it seems worth noting, since he was in Texas at that point in order to campaign there, as Texas was far from certain to back Kennedy in the 1964 election.
Ironically, it was this one historical event that possibly, more than any other single event, might have finally led to the official abolition of legal racial segregation in the United States. Citing the spirit of John F. Kennedy's vision for the country, Lyndon B. Johnson - himself a Texan, and at least a former suspected racist, depending on who or what you believe - who finally forced the political hand and managed to end legal racial segregation, in the South and all across the United States. However, he also understood the political costs, when he allegedly said to an aide in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “We have lost the South for a generation.”
Now, whether or not he actually said those words, or something similar, is unsure (see the link to the article by Dr. Steven J. Allen below for more details). Yet, it seems to be the accepted truth that he said something to that effect, and that he understood that "the South," which for the most part had always voted solidly Democratic up to that point, switched allegiances, pretty much overnight. And those trends, if anything, have remained, and perhaps even been entrenched in the decades since.
Some of course might take exception to the notion that these things, which happened well over half a century ago now, would still influence today's complicated elections. Still, the historical fact that is the South, which was once the "Solid South" in favor of the Democratic party in election after election prior to the Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, now suddenly switched allegiances and, if anything, became the "Solid South" against the Democrats, and mostly in favor of the Republicans, a trend which has largely continued since. There have been some exceptions and seeming breakthroughs, like when Southern governors won the White House. Jimmy Carter broke through first with an almost sweep of the South in 1976, and then Clinton managed the feat by breaking up the Solid South support of Republican candidates in 1992 and again, to a lesser extent, in 1996. However, election maps in 1968 show sudden fierce resistance to what had previously been solid support for the Democrats, with Southern states voting either for Republicans, or for segregationist George Wallace. Since then, the "Solid South" helped sweep Nixon to easily win a second term in 1972, and solidly supported Reagan over Carter (with the exception of Georgia) in 1980, then helped him sweep to a second term with solid support in 1984. George H. W. Bush relied on the Solid South to win in 1988, much like his son also relied on the Solid South to win the White House both in 2000 and 2004. The Solid South began to lose some ground, particularly in the states close to the North, Virginia and North Carolina, as well as Florida. Virginia has seemingly become a de facto blue state, while North Carolina and Florida seem to be purple, to go back and forth, depending on which election year, and which issues seemed to appeal to them at the time. The Solid South (again, with the notable exception of Virginia) voted in favor of Trump, and helped him win the White House. Many white nationalists celebrated this historical win, and it should be noted that the man who succeeded the first black president in American history actually received the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan and other blatantly racist groups. And remember, Trump referred to Mexicans as "rapists" who are bringing crime and drugs into the United States. Here is a summary of these comments, made in the very speech when Trump first officially and formally announced that he was running for the Oval Office for the 2016 presidential race (see link below):
In June 2015, while Trump was a presidential candidate, he said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best."
He added: "They're sending people that have a lot of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
This, of course, implies that Mexico is deliberately sending it's worst elements to the United States, as a matter almost of policy. He did not outright say that, but it hardly takes a major stretch of the imagination to connect the dots. But it was hardly the only similar incident when Trump's comments or actions were widely regarded as either racist, or specifically appealing to racist supporters. There was his championing of creating a Muslim registry and abolishing all immigration of Muslims into the United States, which was struck down as unconstitutional. There was his dismissal of dozens of countries in Africa and Latin America as "shithole nations." And there was also the instance when he briefly posted a video of one of his supporters shouting "white power" during the 2020 campaign. Indeed, many people suspected that Trump brought out a dark flirtation with a return to racist attitudes and even policies, and many still suspect that this is what fuels Trump's popularity and political dominance over the GOP, which has effectively become the Trump party. Prior to Trump, specifically, it feels that many of these incidents would have automatically ended a prominent politicians career, specifically because that politician would surely have backed down and apologized at every opportunity. The fact that Trump showed no shame and, in fact, often doubled-down on these things was a major part of his appeal for MAGA supporters.
Many people blame Trump for the spike in hate crimes and, more generally, the visible increase in racism and xenophobia, which he was instrumental in making it a mainstream element in the American political discourse. However, it was another man who also dominated the Republican party who actually helped to make all of this possible. I am talking, of course, of the model conservative president, according to seemingly most Republicans and self-identified conservatives, in any case: Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was not held to task for these prejudices during his own day. In truth, he was much more clever at hiding those prejudices than Trump was, although he was not entirely successful, either. But it was there, as an Op/Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, written by Daniel S. Luck reveals:
Whenever the issue of Reagan’s hostility to civil rights and unpopularity with Black Americans is broached, conservatives leap to Reagan’s defense and stress his apparent lack of personal racism. That view has been shredded by the disclosure last year of a phone call in October 1971 between Richard Nixon and Reagan, in which Reagan described African diplomats as “monkeys,” who were still “uncomfortable wearing their shoes.”
Reagan was better at avoiding being pegged as a blatant racist than Trump ever was. Yet again, however, it hardly takes a huge stretch of the imagination to pierce through all of this. Shortly after securing the Republican nomination for the presidency, he visited Philadelphia, Mississippi and gave a speech where he championed states rights, which itself had been code not long before for being for legalized segregation, as was officially practiced in the Jim Crow South a little more than a decade and a half earlier. Hardly ancient history. This is what Reagan said during that particular speech (see link to the full speech below):
I believe in states' rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.
Here's the thing: that speech was delivered almost in the same place where, again just a little over a decade and a half earlier, three civil rights activists had been murdered, and in cold blood, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. But you would never know that by listening to Reagan on that day, because he never mentioned this incident, much less condemned it. And again, the speech was expressing his favoring states rights, and it likely appealed to some locals who likely sympathized with those who murdered those three civil rights workers:
The fairgrounds are mere miles away from the site where three civil rights workers — one a student participating in Mississippi Freedom Summer and the other two CORE members — were murdered and buried in shallow graves by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.
So we never went all that long without an American flirtation with traditional racist attitudes, particularly in rural states and regions. Racism is as American as apple pie. It never really went away. In fact, it never went anywhere. That is why the South, which was much more agrarian than the North even before and during the Civil War, seemed to harbor these prejudices. And while some Southern states, such as Maryland and Virginia and Florida, have become more urban and joined the ranks of the so-called "blue states," the South received more political allies with rural states further to the west and north. They have always been there, and it almost always seems to find it's political voice in many rural states, and particularly consistently in the South. Remember, some nationally prominent, and formerly outright pro-segregation politicians remained in power in Southern states for many years, even decades, after segregation was officially made illegal. Some examples include, but are not necessarily limited to George Wallace, Robert Byrd (who in fairness, remained a Democrat throughout his political career), Strom Thurmond, and Jesse Helms, who worked hard in the 1970's and early 1980's to help Reagan win the White House, and the resurgence of political conservatism that his political rise brought to the country ever since.
It is a long and complicated history, to be sure. But is hardly irrelevant to our current political discourse and cultural divide. That is why the rise of nationalism and a casual, more hidden racism by Reagan made the rise of someone like Trump many years later possible, and perhaps even inevitable. That is why the triumph of hatred and, yes, racism, during this rise of Trump was actually not a total surprise for some people, myself included. Indeed, it feels to me the very embodiment of a common saying, which applies in this case regarding American political realities today: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Map source:
https://www.facebook.com/PuertoRicansforObama/photos/a.337249696371243/345762708853275/
Davis, M. (2018). ‘Culture Is Inseparable from Race’: Culture Wars from Pat Buchanan to Milo Yiannopoulos. M/C Journal, 21(5).
https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1484
https://www.journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1484
The Confederate Flag: Symbol of Opposition to Civil Rights
https://www.teachingforchange.org/confederate-flag-and-civil-rights
“We have lost the South for a generation”: What Lyndon Johnson said, or would have said if only he had said it by Dr. Steven J. Allen October 7, 2014:
https://capitalresearch.org/article/we-have-lost-the-south-for-a-generation-what-lyndon-johnson-said-or-would-have-said-if-only-he-had-said-it/
Op-Ed: Donald Trump, a true Reagan Republican BY DANIEL S. LUCKS JULY 19, 2020
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-19/ronald-reagans-racism-cleared-the-way-for-trump
From Ronald Reagan in Philadelphia, Miss., to Donald Trump in Tulsa, a pattern of racially divisive politics Image without a caption Perspective by Peniel E. Joseph, Professor public affairs and history June 19, 2020:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/19/ronald-reagan-philadelphia-miss-donald-trump-tulsa-pattern-racially-divisive-politics/
Ronald Reagan's 1980 Neshoba County Fair speech Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the 1980 Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia. Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the 1980 Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia. Posted Thursday, April 8, 2021 2:53 pm
https://neshobademocrat.com/stories/ronald-reagans-1980-neshoba-county-fair-speech,49123
Aug. 3, 1980: Reagan Gives “State’s Rights” Speech at Neshoba County Fair by the Zinn Education Project:
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/reagan-speech-at-neshoba/
Trump just referred to one of his most infamous campaign comments: calling Mexicans 'rapists' Michelle Mark Apr 5, 2018:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mexicans-rapists-remark-reference-2018-4
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